A detailed description of the homes, synagogues and workplaces along with the practices and beliefs that comprised the Jewish world of Eastern Europe for hundreds of years until the Holocaust, including an intimate look at who and what remains today. Layers excerpts from oral histories, literary reflections and poems with the author's own interviews, research and photographs to form a rich, multi-dimensional tapestry of a vanished world.
Ruth Ellen Gruber is an award-winning American writer, editor and photographer who has long been based on Europe. She has chronicled European Jewish issues for more than twenty years and works on cultural topics including an ongoing project called "Sauerkraut Cowboys" documenting how Europeans embrace the mythology of the American Wild West.
She coined the term "Virtually Jewish" to describe the way the so-called "Jewish space" in Europe is often filled by non-Jews: klezmer music, culture festivals, museums, tourism, and kitsch as well as serious and sensitive study and involvement.
Her books include National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe, (2007), Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere) (2008), Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (2002), and Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today (1994).
A former correspondent in Eastern Europe for United Press International, she is Senior European correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency JTA. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Tablet Magazine, The Forward, Hadassah Magazine, the New Leader, the London Independent and many other publications. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hadassah Brandeis Institute, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and others.
